Tyler Breeze On Being NXT Tag Team Champion, Fashion Files Disappearing, Potentially Unifying Tag Team Titles

Tyler Breeze and Fandango are set to defend the NXT Tag Team Championships against Imperium on tonight’s NXT, and Breeze talked about being champion, potentially unifying the titles and more in a new interview with Newsweek. You can check out the highlights below:

On their Tag Team Championship defense against Imperium tonight: “It’s taken us a long time to [become champions] and just because we beat Imperium once doesn’t mean we can do it twice. We have to prove that we can beat them again … Imperium doesn’t enjoy a lot of the funny stuff, they think we make a mockery of wrestling. We found our balance and we’re going to show them that we can make you laugh, but also why we’re the NXT Tag Team champions.”

On finally holding a title in WWE: “It’s kind of a foreign feeling for me. Like you said it’s been about 10 years now that I’ve been in WWE so the fact that we got to where all WWE superstars want to be has been worth it. If you’ve been a fan of mine for a long time, you’ve been watching, you know the stories, you know the ups and downs and you’ve watched as I’ve gone from NXT up to RAW, Smackdown back to NXT. Everybody’s been along for the ride so it’s kind of very cool where me and Dango have been a tag team for five years and to finally get to that point where we [won gold] and it’s cool because it doesn’t feel like it’s just us it feels like there’s a whole group of people that said, ‘yes, they did.’ It seems a lot more like a group effort than just me and Dango so the fact that we’re finally here and we’re finally NXT champions is a very sweet feeling and it makes us excited to just do more and more and more.”

On finding more of a balance between comedy and seriousness in NXT: “With anything you do you have to have a balance so if you get introduced as, let’s say, these monsters that are big tough guys and they’re beating everybody up that only goes so far. And the same thing goes if you go out there and make everybody laugh. You need to have a mix of things. We like people that make us laugh and we like to cheer those guys, but if you make people laugh now you got their attention and they’re gonna say, ‘I like this guy, but what else can you do?’ When the bell rings you have to be able to deliver in the ring too, so if you have too much of one thing and not enough of the other the balance is off and that’s what we did when we were on Smackdown doing the Fashion Files. People loved us, but we rarely stepped inside the ring and when we did there were usually pretty short and they were not in our favor.

“This time we take all of our skills that we’ve learned and honed over the ten-plus years that we’ve been with WWE and five years as a team and you find that balance. We’re still doing the entrances and you’re laughing and you like the music and outfits, but now the bell rings and all of a sudden we’re actually getting it done in the ring too and people go ‘holy crap.’ That’s what you have to do, you have to be well-rounded otherwise you’re not going to be able to hang with the guys who are. In WWE a lot of those guys are very well-rounded, they have what it takes when they have the microphone, when they’re all dressed up and have what it takes when the bell rings. So now that we found a balance I think that’s the reason why we’ve become NXT tag champions. It requires that [balance] otherwise the other guys are going to eat you up because they’re very good and we have a talented roster.”

On not seeing Fashion Files in NXT yet: “I think that’s the beauty of WWE and in sports entertainment in general that anything can work so I think NXT would be a perfect place for Fashion Files. I think RAW would be a perfect place for the Fashion Files, it’s one of those things that if you use it properly and you write it into a show it will work because it worked for eight months, and it’s not one of those things that we’re just saying it worked. The whole reason [Fashion Files] survived was because of social media and on a show where you have so much talent when you’re the number one trending topic on Smackdown people take notice and we’re asked to do it another week and another and eight months later we’re still alive because everybody’s saying ‘give us another Fashion Files.’ That tells you that in any scenario it’s going to work so I know myself and Dango would both love for it to come back in the right scenario with the right writing and if it works for what we’re doing I guarantee people will go ‘man, that was really cool. I miss that.'”

On criticism of WWE’s handling of tag teams: “Wrestling in general goes in phases. I think it’s just one of those things, and in today’s society everybody has an opinion and everybody feels their opinion should be heard and it’s very important, so I think it goes in phases. Everybody goes ‘there’s no tag teams” so all of a sudden there’ll be a bunch of tag teams come out of nowhere and then all of a sudden you’ll switch to ‘there’s too many tag teams’ so then all the tag teams will go away. We want everybody’s opinions we want feedback, but at the same time if there’s only a couple tag teams it doesn’t mean that tag team wrestling is dead or it’s struggling it just means there’s been a couple things that have happened and now we’re waiting for more teams to kind of emerge and become a thing, which that’s just the natural course of wrestling in general.

“I think that WWE tag team wrestling is very strong and it has been for years. I think even back when we were on Smackdown and there were teams like Gable and Jordan and New Day and The Usos and everybody else. You have all this talent it’s just a matter of when you’re gonna get to see it and when it’s going to be on a show. Even now you got a guy like Cesaro who you can toss with literally any partner and they’re going to be an extremely talented tag team and he’s proven it time after time. It’s just a matter of what we want to do, when we want to do it and it’s just a matter of patience of when you’re going to see it.”

On fans wanting to see the tag team titles unified: “There are times like Survivor Series last year when RAW, SmackDown were coming to NXT and vice-versa where everybody was kind of intermingling, but that also is why things like that are special because we don’t overdo it, we don’t do it all the time. If every week you saw RAW and Smackdown guys on NXT and NXT guys on RAW and Smackdown everyone will go, ‘oh we should have separate brands again.’ It’s one of those things where I want to keep it special. You do it at certain times at the right time and that’s when it’s exciting. We have a lot of options and opportunities, fans just have to be patient.”